Echoes in the Early Morning
by purple.bookworm.girl
Summary: After Booth and Brennan are in a car accident while driving to question a witness, Brennan ends up in the hospital in a coma. Booth reminisces about when he was in a coma and she read her book to him, but has no book to read to her himself.
1. Chapter 1

**_A/N: Hey everybody! This is by far not my first fanfic, but it is my first Bones fanfic, and it's the first time I'm trying a WIP in a long time (I mostly write oneshots). So any advice/concrit (but not flames, those suck :P but if you feel the need...I suppose it's a free country...but I'm not going to stop writing for you...) is welcome!_**

**_I'm also not sure any of the medical stuff is right...I tried to do research, but I'm bad at research for medical things..._**

**_Disclaimer: I own nada. Though not for lack of wishing._**

Seeley Booth sat in the hospital waiting room, his head in his hands. He could not believe how overwhelmed he felt at this point. Cam, Angela, Hodgins, Sweets, and Wendell were all in the waiting room with him, all feeling varying degrees of the same, but Booth felt almost as if he'd be crushed by the weight of it all before the doctor came back out to update them on Bones' condition. He stood up and began to pace, the events of that morning playing back through his mind in terrifying clarity.

_It should have been so routine. They were just going to question a witness, just talking and laughing, Bones driving for once. Stopped at a red light, just discussing anything and everything under the sun. Light changed, they began to drive through the intersection, Booth's eyes on Bones as always. But the truck barreling through the red light of the other direction, he didn't even notice until it was too late – the world exploded, everything shattered, and the only thing in his mind was "Bones cannot be hurt, not this time, not now…"_

_He'd blacked out for some time, he didn't know how long…but he'd come to and been pushed back in his chair, his airbag fluttered out over his legs. He could hear sirens in the background, knew someone had called 911, knew he'd be okay, but that didn't matter. What did matter was that Bones was slumped over the steering wheel, no airbag fluttered out over her legs, and she wasn't stirring at all._

"_Bones," he said, softly. No response. He tried again, more urgently. "Bones."_

_He reached for her, searing pain shooting through his wrist at the movement, but he didn't care, he had to wake her up. The ever-closer sirens stopped moving and he could hear voices as the paramedics approached the cars. One shouted, "Can anybody hear me?" Booth reached out his other arm through the mangled, broken window and shouted back._

"_In hear! We need help!" Someone was near him in a second, prying open his door and asking questions quickly. He shook his head in response, pointing with his left hand despite the pain, back toward the driver's side._

"_Not me! Not me! My partner, the driver, she's unconscious, she needs help…"_

He snapped back from the horrible reverie as a doctor entered the waiting room again. The whole team jumped up as one and clustered around him, Angela clutching Hodgins' hand like a lifeline. The doctor looked slightly taken aback, but he took it in stride.

"She had some bleeding in her brain, we think due to her head striking the steering wheel in response to the faulty airbag not expanding properly. She's through surgery, but she hasn't woken up yet, some people come out of anesthesia badly. Someone will come and get you when you are free to see her." The doctor stepped calmly from the room, leaving the dumbfounded team staring at one another blankly.

"What does that mean, she's not awake yet, she might come through anesthesia badly?" Angela asked worriedly. Hodgins squeezed her hand as Booth answered.

"That's what happened to me, when I was in the coma…I came out of the anesthesia badly and was out for four days," he said quietly. Cam nodded her agreement, but Angela didn't look at all relieved. To be sure, Booth didn't feel relieved at all either – the thought of Bones in a coma made his heart drop with a sickening feeling in his chest.

The whole team sat back down again, but Booth stood up almost immediately and resumed his pacing. After about five minutes of this, Cam stood up and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Come with me," she said quietly, indicating a corner of the waiting room slightly removed from the others. He followed her silently, adrenaline still coursing through his body.

"Booth, I know you're worried about Dr. Brennan, we all are," Cam started off slowly, "but you've got to hold it together, for her, and out there for Angela. Once they let us see her I know you're going to ask to stay with her, just like she did with you. We'll support you, you know we will…just do what you think is right." She walked away, back to her seat, and crossed her legs, her extended foot jiggling nervously in a very un-Cam-like manner.

Booth stood stock-still for a second, taken aback by Cam's sudden statement. His muddled brain worked double-time to try and focus on what she's saying and what he's feeling at the same time. _It's Bones,_ he thought, _we're just partners._ But that's not true, not anymore. It hasn't been for quite some time.

Finally another doctor entered the room, asking for the friends of Dr. Temperance Brennan. They all jumped up again, all waiting for his news. He shook his head slightly before speaking. "She still hasn't woken up yet – I'm sorry. She can have some visitors now though, only one or two at a time for just a few minutes. Who would like to go first?"

Everyone looked at Booth, then at Cam, then back at Booth. He waved Angela and Hodgins forward, stepping back just slightly, suddenly unsure of what he would say or do when in the room with his comatose partner.

Angela and Hodgins left with the doctor, Angela shooting Booth a grateful look as they passed through the doors. Sweets tapped his fingers on his crossed knees, looking ever so much like an agitated schoolboy. Wendell stood, leaning against the wall next to Sweets' chair, but neither spoke to the other. Booth resumed his pacing, and Cam didn't move for a moment as she looked from the doors swinging after the departure of the doctor to Booth and back again, in a replay of the others. Finally she sat back down, still unsure.

Booth's mind was a-whirl. When he was in his coma, she read to him – read her book to him. He doesn't write. He doesn't have a book to read to her. He doesn't know how he's going to act once he is alone with her.

Angela and Hodgins came back, indicating that two more people could go in to see Brennan. Without looking up, Booth waved Sweets and Wendell through, earning himself strange looks from the team but not particularly caring. A teary-eyed Angela came to stand in front of him, blocking his path, a truly sympathetic look on her face.

"Booth, she'll be all right," Angela said bravely. Booth shook his head, hard.

"You can't know that, Angela!" he burst out. The woman was taken aback by his Brennan-esque factual outburst, but she kept on speaking.

"But it's true. I'm scared too, but it's Brennan, she's always all right. She has us. She has you. And you're going to go in there and you're going to know exactly what to say, even if you totally have no idea what you're saying as you say it."

Without ceremony, Booth stepped deliberately around Angela and resumed his pacing, which replaced her taken-aback-yet-determined look with one of almost pity and a touch of annoyance. But she didn't press the issue any longer, instead going back to sit by Hodgins and Cam across the room.

Sweets and Wendell were not in the room very long, but each came back with a look of deep disturbance on their face – their strong, sure, confident, take-no-prisoners Brennan was lying in a hospital bed, completely unresponsive. It was unnerving.

Cam went over to Booth one last time, gently placing her hand just above his elbow, and guided him slightly towards the door that led away from the waiting room and towards Dr. Brennan. He allowed her to guide him for a moment, almost as if in a trance, but he broke away quickly and walked into Brennan's room of his own accord.

He nearly burst out into tears just walking in. The wires and tubes attached to his beautiful partner's body, the bandages covering so much of her soft skin, the dark circles under her eyes shut tight – it was all virtually overwhelming. Glancing at the speechless man with her, Cam spoke first.

"We're not sure if you can hear us, Dr. Brennan…but it's Cam. Cam and Booth. We're here just to say hi…and that we want you to get better as quick as you can. The doctors said your surgery was all right, and we all want you back to be telling the doctors exactly where they went wrong in how they treated you. But right now I'm going to leave, and it's just going to be Booth…we're all out there in the waiting room, we're all pulling for you. Just…just get better, Dr. Brennan."

She exited quietly, quickly, leaving Booth staring after her with a look of desperation on his face. But she did not look back, and finally he looked down to Bones, lying so still in that impersonal hospital bed. Swiping furiously at his eyes, he opened his mouth.

"H-hi, Bones," he choked out, nearly inaudible, his voice cracking. He glowered inwardly for a second: that had not happened since the tenth grade. But the out-of-context high school memory made him chuckle, which suddenly put him much more at ease.

"Oh, Bones," he began, "I've been pacing and worried and I have no idea what to say to you. And just now…seeing you…it breaks my heart. I'm supposed to protect you!" His voice rises.

"Always! I don't know what to do about this – it's painful, excruciatingly, to see you lying there so helpless. And I know you read your book to me when I was in my coma…but I don't have a book to read. I just have me. So I'm just going to talk. And we'll see how that turns out in the end."


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: Oh my gosh! I think I've gotten more reviews/alerts/favorites for this story than for any other story I've ever written - do you know how amazing that makes me feel? Thank you soooooooo much to everyone who's reviewed/alerted/favorited me!_**

**_I've decided that odd-numbered chapters are going to be what's going on in the real world - where Bones is in the coma and Booth is talking to her - and even-numbered chapters will be what Bones sees while Booth is talking to her.  
><em>**

Brennan was severely confused – it was not a feeling she was particularly fond of. This place was familiar – the outside of the FBI building. She was here all the time, this time should not be special. But the time felt familiar also – like she had already lived through this, but was back as an observer on someone else's experiences in her own time.

She turned around slowly and caught sight of something nearly as familiar to her as breathing – her own form walking step for step with that of Booth, her head on his shoulder, her cream coat striking against his dark gray suit jacket. And suddenly she knew.

It was _that night_ – or at least that's how she still referred to it in her own mind. _That night_ when they had gone to confront Sweets about his book. And they talked. They talked all about that very first case, and their very first kiss, and she had realized that she'd stopped building walls where _he_ was concerned. So when they walked outside, and he decided to play the gambler, to go all in, she was ready. Or she thought she was. But as soon as his lips met hers, her walls flew back up, for once not to keep people out – but to keep her _in_.

She watched her past self, the self so torn by those stupid walls, walk with Booth's past self. She watched him put her in a cab, watches him watch sadly as the cab takes off towards her lonely apartment. Her past self did not look back – she can see this pains her partner. What he did not know is that silent, painful tears had coursed down her face as she began again the process of tearing down her walls – in that instant, where she did not look back, she had been so torn between logic and love that her walls had become a prison instead of a fortress.

But her present self did not dwell on past events in her own life. Instead she followed Booth's past self, pain jarring her chest at the dejected slump of his shoulders and angry-yet-certain set of his jaw. He headed back towards his apartment, and furthering the impression that this was only a dream, she was there quickly, with no real explanation for how.

Booth grabbed a beer from the fridge and plopped down on the couch, but he made no move either to pop the cap of his beer or to turn on the television. He sat in silence for a few moments, staring blankly off into the middle distance, a look of pain etched into his features.

Words began to flow through Brennan's mind, words spoken in a whisper in Booth's familiar voice. She deduced that these were his thoughts, again accepting this as logical in the frame and context of a dream.

"Why on earth did I ever let myself listen to Sweets?" comes the whisper, "why did I ever think I wouldn't lose this gamble? She's not ready, I'm not sure she'll ever be ready…"

Brennan felt the same pain as early fill her chest again, and she wanted to yell, "You're the only one who can make me ready!" But she knew he could not hear her, and she watched silently, his jumbled thoughts almost one with her own.

Booth pulled his wallet from his pocket, flipped it open. Two pictures fell, fluttering gently to rest on the coffee table. One she knew was Parker – he'd shown it to her numerous times, it changed every year around October when school photos came out. But the other – she did not know he carried _two_ photos in his wallet. She stepped closer, leaning over the back of the couch to see.

It was her – laughing at some long-forgotten joke, her hair long and loose around her shoulders, blue eyes sparkling merrily. Booth gazed at the photo, thumb caressing the already well-worn edge.

A sad smile softened Brennan's features as she watched him._ He keeps a picture of me in his wallet,_ she thought,_ right next to that of his son._

The whisper of Booth's thoughts invaded her own again. "I told her I need to move on, to find someone who will love _me…_" the whisper trailed off, then came back full force.

"But I knew! I've always known, since that first case, that very first case…"

Brennan was no longer in Booth's apartment – now she was in a rather familiar lecture classroom at American University. Her past self stood upon the lecture platform, bodies in various stages and methods of decomp surrounding her. Her present self stood just behind Booth, in the back of the room, as he watched the goings-on in front of him with mild interest in the lecture and a rather strong interest in the lecturer. The students began to file out, and Brennan watched the very first meeting of herself and her future partner. It was casual, and impromptu, and charged with electricity that she distinctly remembers being flustered by. And the old Temperance Brennan had even less tolerance for being flustered than the new.

Booth's whisper-thoughts invaded her head again, and she nearly laughed out loud at their word choice and phrasing. "She is _hot._ H-O-T. Wow. _She_ handles dead bodies all day? Not what I thought Cam was talking about, not a looker like that…"

The funny thing was, Brennan did not remember her thoughts being all that much more coherent. More logical, maybe, but that did not necessarily mean coherence to a rational mind like her own.

She was back in Booth's apartment again, back again to _that night_. He sat in the same place, beer still unopened, television set still dark.

"I knew!" he shouted angrily, not a whisper-thought but an actual sound, at least in the dream. He stood up, still thumbing the picture of Brennan from his wallet, and began to pace. Dark shadows crossed his face as he kept mumbling, "I knew. I knew…"

She wanted so bad to reach out to him and hug him, as he did when she was upset. He knew her better than anybody, she knew that. He was the closest thing she'd come to a real brother, closer than Russ – she had told Caroline as much after that fateful mistletoe Christmas kiss. But he was so much more than a brother – she knew that. She just had no idea how to break down her walls – at least not yet.


End file.
